Analytics are at the are the heart of many businesses today, helping companies mine data to improve productivity, decrease costs, understand customer preferences, and much more. But when it comes to mobile apps, developers and enterprises are in the dark. There's little data available about how mobile apps are used, how effective they are, and how end-users respond to them.
Colin Steele, TechTarget
But that's changing, according to a blog post on SearchMobileComputing by Colin Steele. Steele looks at the state of mobile in-app analytics, explains how it can make mobile apps far more effective, and offers advice on how to use it.
Steele notes that more and more, analytics are being built into mobile apps, and can answer questions such as how many buttons it takes to accomplish common tasks, what sequence of events causes an app to crash, and which features users ignore --- and why.
He notes that one problem with mobile app rollouts is that developers typically test app performance and user experience in beta tests before the app is released, and only with a controlled subset of users. That's problematic, because it doesn't reflect the real-world experiences of how an app is actually used.
That's why in-app analytics are important. Philippe Winthrop, global mobility evangelist at IT services provider CSC, explained to Steele, "In-app analytics are critical to application lifecycle management There is no such thing as version one-and-done of an enterprise mobile app. You're always going to be iterating."
Getting Started with Mobile In-App Analytics
Steele notes that there are plenty of mobile in-app analytics vendors out there, with plenty more on the ways. Localytics, Crittercism, Appsee and Twitter's Crashlytics are just a few. IBM, Adobe, and other vendors include in-app analytics as part of larger mobile platforms.
A major challenge for enterprises getting started with in-app analytics is what to do with what the analytics uncover. How can that information be fed back to developers? What's the process for gathering analytics? Who in the organization should get the information? What is the new workflow for building and improving apps? Companies need to decide all that before using an analytics platform.
And finally, analytics is one thing, but making use of what you find something else entirely. You need a flexible development platform that lets you iterate quickly --- something at which that Alpha Anywhere excels.
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